1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an image-processing device that provides medical image data that correspond to the type of image processing, and to an image processing method and image processing program thereof
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advancement and development of image processing technology that uses computers, CT (Computed Tomography), MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), PET (Position Emission Tomography) and the like, which make it possible to directly observe the internal tissue of the human body, have emerged, and technologies such as these have brought about innovation in the medical field, so that currently medical diagnosis that uses tomographic images (slice data) of the body is widely being performed. In medical diagnosis, not only is technology being used in which it is possible to display slice data, but technology, such as volume rendering that directly draws images of 3-dimensional tissues from 3-dimensional digital data (volume data) of the body that are obtained from CT, is also being used that makes it possible to visualize complicated 3-dimensional tissues inside the human body that are difficult to comprehend with just tomographic images. Moreover, in volume rendering, the Raycast method, the MIP (Maximum Intensity Projection) method, the MPR (Multi Planar Reconstruction) method that cuts out arbitrary cross sections from the volume data and displays those cross sections, and the CPR (Curved Multi Planer Reconstruction) method are typically used for the 3-dimensional image processing in volume rendering. Furthermore, the medical image data are stored in a memory device.
ID information such as normal Study ID and Series ID information are attached to the medical image data.
Study ID (Identification) information is attribute information that expresses the logical unit of slice data that can be set arbitrarily in accordance to circumstances on the imaging side. Generally, this is a image data group that are necessary for one diagnosis, which may includes one or more volume data, some rendered image and diagnostic result. For example, in the case that cancer is suspect, this may be slice data groups for one or a plurality of imaging devices from one or more days for identifying whether or not there is cancer and/or the size of the cancer The same Study ID information is included in all of the slice data of the slice data group.
Series ID information is attribute information for identifying one or more slice data for one imaging device when an imaging is requested (the same Series ID information is included in all of the slice data). For example, one volume of data may be constructed by combining items of medical image data that contain the same Series ID.
Medical image data process that use this medical image data include types of image processing such as graphic processing that uses 4-dimensional data, CT-PET fusion processing that simultaneously displays CT images and PET images, display processing of 2-dimensional moving images (e.g. moving images by angiography), MR brain perfusion processing, coronary artery analysis, and the like. In order to execute these processes, the doctor or radiologist, who is the user, specifies combinations of medical image data that are considered to be most appropriate for each process from the memory device where it is stored together with other medical image data, and specifies a combination of medical image data while viewing all or part of the medical image data and the attributes thereof, then executes each process to create each of the various images.
The combinations of medical image data that are necessary for executing each of the various aforementioned processes differ according to the contents of the process, so suitable combinations must be selected from among a plurality of medical image data, and in order to execute a desired process, it is necessary to search for a suitable combination of medical image data, and then select and specify the desired medical image data. This work poses problems for the doctor or radiologist, who is the user, in that the operations are troublesome and require much time, which is stressful for the user, and there is a possibility that the work will interfere with proper medical practice.
Therefore, conventionally, the imaging device attached Study ID and Series ID information to the medical image data, however, the imaging device did not have the information for each of the processes described above, so the most suitable ID information was not always attached. For example, even though imaging is performed for the entire body as the object, analysis may be performed for just a certain organ as the object. Also, in the case of obtaining medical image data from a plurality of devices and combining that data for use, each imaging device attached totally unrelated ID information, so it was not possible to obtain a suitable combination of medical image data from just the ID information.
Moreover, when a wrong combination of medical image data is specified, the program that executes the processing will reject input of that wrong combination of medical image data, or an erroneous image will be displayed, so there was a problem in that the operation for specifying a combination of medical image data was difficult.
Furthermore, since the amount of medical image data is normally very large, much time was required from the time the user specified the medical image data until the image processing was executed, so there was a problem in that useless waiting time occurred.